Trade Show Pass or Fail? How to Use an ROI Calculator to Measure Success

You’ve just finished a weekend-long trade show. Don’t relax just yet. While the show may be over, now comes the most critical part of the experience. You know investing in trade shows is an important aspect of your business’s success, especially when it comes to trade show lead generation, but you must now evaluate and measure the data to decide if you did, in fact, see a return on your investment. Here’s how to sort the details of the event to understand your overall investment in comparison to your potential revenue, by using an ROI calculator.

Know the Cost

Take an inventory of costs including booth sponsorship fees, transportation, marketing materials, flights or travel expenses, hotel, giveaways and promotional marketing swag. Every cost you’ve incurred in preparing for the event, participating in the event and returning from the event, should be counted. How many branded pens did you give out? How many snacks did you buy? How much did you tip the Uber driver back to the hotel? Include costs of the trade show display itself and additional costs for market research you conducted prior to the event.

Assess Your Sales, Future Leads, and Profits

Compile short, mid-, and long-term profit reports resulting from the trade show production. Calculate not only immediate revenue generated from the event but also to project your sales funnel based on new commitments or leads that may convert to sales in the future.

Also, reflect on branding efforts made in participating in the event. Increasing awareness of your company can have monetary value concerning new connections, as well as an influx of traffic on social media or subscribers to your company newsletter. These new followers of your brand and possible brand advocates should be nurtured into warm leads, sales, and returning customers over time.

Do the Math

The goal is to determine how many new clients would you have to land to cover your costs. Do the math. Subtract your marketing expenses from your gross profits and divide the balance by the marketing expenses and place a precise value on the trade show.

Example: ($20,000 – $10,000)/$10,000 = 1 (100% ROI)

Trade shows and events present a multitude of valuable benefits outside of breaking down the budget with an ROI calculator. How many new people did you meet? Did you learn something new about your industry or your competition? Can you translate the experience into a service advantage for your company? Keep attending new shows and venturing out into new markets. Investing in trade show marketing for lead generation is a “priceless” investment, but by doing market research you can narrow down which trade shows worked better for you business’s goals.

If you’re interested in event marketing for your business, contact us today to learn more about our customizable trade show displays!